Page 6 of Her Cruel Redemption

She was pandering to me, and it wasn’t what I needed. Close was not going to be good enough. 'I don't want to be better, I want to be lethal.'

When I turned to her, she was studying me with a frown, her spiral curls tucked away from her face with a fabric band. The frown slipped from her when she met my gaze with her unnerving violet eyes. 'Then keep practising. You can't expect to be brilliant immediately.'

'I'm hardly expecting immediacy. We've been at this for weeks,' I muttered as I stomped to the tree and yanked the knife out, before bending to scoop up the others that hadn't lodged. Initially, we hadn’t had much to do with each other. She was one of the Yoxvese caretakers of those morbid tombs full of glass coffins in the caverns below our feet. The caretakers–Elias among their number–all lived together on the floor of the valley instead of on the floating mountains above with the other Yoxvese, so they were the ones Gwinellyn had befriended when she'd arrived here. Mae and Gwinellyn had grown close in the time they'd spent together, so Mae had been almost as wary of me as Elias at first. But she’d stumbled across me trying to throw knives weeks ago, had taken in my frustration and my clumsy aim, before offering her help. It was one of the more surprising interactions I'd had here, given that violence was forbidden in the Living Valley.

I didn't know where Mae learned to throw knives. She refused to tell me. And I refused to tell her why I wanted to learn. But even with these secrets kept, her attitude towards me had shifted. It was almost as if she’d recognised something in me. As if she understood me on some level without me ever having to explain myself.

Whatever the reason, my time in her company was a relief. It was focused, and without wariness or expectation or interrogation. I could simply be.

'You’re very impatient,' Mae said. 'You need to learn that some things take time.'

Easy to say when you'd spent your entire life living in a secret valley shielded from the world's ugliness. Easy to say when you weren’t being hunted, perhaps at this very moment, or when you didn’t have vengeance to serve. I didn't say any of this to her, though. That wasn’t our way.

I returned to my spot, slipping each knife into the belt with scabbards I'd strung across my chest, before taking a breath and stretching out my neck and shoulders. I'd found the whole ensemble among Baba Yaga's things, so I'd taken them. It wasn't like the old witch needed them anymore. She'd probably just picked them off one of the victims whose heads had been rotting on spikes around her clearing, anyway.

'Try to relax this time,' Mae murmured, shifting my arms slightly, her touch feather-light. 'You’re focusing too hard.'

'Easier said than done,' I muttered, but I took another deep breath. I fixed my focus on that circle, shifted the knife in my grip, widened my stance. When I raised my arm to bring the knife to my ear, I released the breath slowly. In one fluid motion, I flung my arm forwards, trying to keep my wrist straight while focusing on releasing the knife at the right moment. It spun through the air, one perfect, full rotation, before it thumped into the trunk, lodging into a point just within the bounds of the circle.

'Look at that! You hit the target!' Mae exclaimed, clapping her hands together.

'I barely touched it.' That wasn’t going to be enough. If I threw like that in the heat of a fight, I would be done. I made to throw the next knife.

'That’s enough for today,' Mae said, and I could see her stretching out of the corner of my eye.

'You can go. I'll keep practicing alone,' I said, lining up the knife with my sight of the bullseye.

‘We’ve been at this for far too long now. It’s going to be dark soon.’

In a burst of irrational frustration, I threw the knife into the dirt at my feet and turned on her. ‘Then teach me magic instead. Teach me how to wield magic and we can do away with all this nonsense of throwing knives. We both know that I wouldn’t need them if I could direct my lightning.’ I was breathing heavily, fury hissing through my teeth, frustration rising from my skin like heat.

She held me in her violet gaze, quiet for a long moment, seeming to take in my frustration without reacting to it. ‘I thought Elias just spoke with you about this,’ she finally said.

‘What he told me was that you all want to make my choices for me. You know I’m not going to give the magic up, and you know I’m going to keep trying to control it. It would save me a lot of time if you would just agree to help me do something that I’m going to do no matter what.’

‘No.’ The response was unyielding, and there was no sympathy in her expression.

I drew closer to her. ‘Why, because you’re too scared of your Elders to break the rules?’ I spat.

‘Because I don’t trust you to wield something so dangerous.’

I deflated a little, punctured by the stab of honesty. A sense of hopelessness crashed over me, of helplessness. I wastrappedin this infernal valley where I was an intruder and an outcast, and I would remain trapped here until I could master this ability that would make me invincible in the world beyond. Did none of them understand that? Did they not understand that teaching me how to wield magic was the surest way to get rid of me?

‘You know he’s looking for me,’ I said, dropping my eyes to her feet, the admission feeling like a stress fracture in the shell of rage I’d coated myself in. When I was able to look up again, it was to find her unchanged. If she was surprised by the fact I was finally confessing what motivated me to practice so fiercely, to push so hard, she didn’t show it. In fact, she just nodded slightly, not even asking whohewas. Like she’d always known. ‘If I can’t defend myself… if he catches me…’ I couldn’t finish the sentence. The words tasted too bitter in my mouth. And I didn’t really know how to encapsulate my fear of what Draven would do to me in words. And that fear was entwined too tightly with my own throbbing need for vengeance to be understood in its own right.

Mae released a heavy sigh. ‘I can teach you to shield your mind.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘If I teach you to shield, it will make it more difficult for him to compel or read you. At least, I think it will. We use a technique here sometimes when we’re wanting to keep our emotions private.’

Well, someone should have offered me that sooner. The way they read each other’s emotions using magic, integrating the constant touch of it into their conversations, had been off putting to me from the beginning. I could feel when they were doing it, prickling away at my skin like I was being watched by someone I couldn’t see. I’d taken to snapping at any who tried it. My emotions were no one else’s business. If they wanted to know what I was feeling, they could ask, and then they could be happy with whatever answer and accompanying expression I fed them. They had no right to push beyond what I wanted to show them and take intimacy where it wasn’t offered. It made sense that there would be some way to prevent it.

I stepped towards her in my eagerness, leaving the knife embedded in the dirt, forgotten. ‘Is it a kind of magic? How long will it take to learn?’

‘Don’t get too excited,’ she said, gesturing with her hands like she was trying to settle me down. ‘It will take time to master. And no, it’s not magic, so this isn’t a sign that I’m wavering.’

Disappointment cut down my zeal. I turned back to my knife, plucked it from the dirt. Ofcourse,it was going to take time to master. It seemed likenothingwas going to be any immediate help to me. I felt like I’d achieved nothing in the days and weeks that had fallen away from me while I’d hidden here. While the land beyond had fallen to war. While I was being hunted. ‘Wonderful. Another skill to practice,’ I muttered, taking my stance again.

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